A recently declassified Japanese government document shows that Japan intentionally cut the number of Korean forced laborers in negotiations with the South Korean government in the 1960s to reduce its financial responsibility.

In negotiations on signing the 1965 bilateral treaty on basic relations, the South Korean government demanded that Japan pay compensation to one-million-30-thousand Korean people who were forced into labor in Japanese companies during Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula in the early 1900s. But Tokyo refused to do to, saying that it didn’t know the exact number of Korean forced laborers and only 20-thousand Korean people died during the colonial era.

However, a document written by Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare for the negotiations shows that Japan forced one-million-30-thousand Koreans into labor, and of them, 77-thousand died.

The document also shows that the Japanese government considered paying damages to each of the Korean forced laborers.

According to the document, the Japanese government thought that the International Court of Justice had no jurisdiction to intervene in the dispute between South Korea and Japan over the Dokdo islets. At that time, Tokyo also concluded that it had low chances of winning even if it sent the Dokdo case to the international court.